I, Claudia A Novel of the Ancient World

PROLOGUE

They wore the faces of my dreams. Men, women, and children, mouths open in joyous shouts, made soundless by the din of hundreds of marching feet. The people lined the narrow streets, the wealthier watching from their palace rooftops, their children tossing brightly colored scarves upon the phalanxes of soldiers. The lead centurion held the shield of Tiberius steadily aloft: S.P.Q.R. Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (Roman Senate and People). The legionnaire moved it only when an errant puff of color landed on the scarlet standard, momentarily obscuring the golden eagle glittering in the bright sunlight.

He has had his arms raised for how many hours now? Shouldn’t there be a Joshua to help this Moses?

I suppressed a smile at my wittiness, knowing better than to voice the thought aloud. My ladies would be shocked by my allusion to the great Jewish prophet. I was well aware of my reputation as an empty-headed nitwit among those who served my husband; such low expectations had served me well. Best to maintain the fiction.

Soft pinks, yellows, reds, and blues of all shades drifted lazily down the still, hot currents of desert air. They resembled butterflies until our carriage drew close enough to see that they were scarves. Some of the soft cloths puddled on the dirt streets as I watched, only to be trampled by the next column of tightly grouped soldiers. The morning sun made the helmets and shields of the marching men radiate so brightly that they could not be looked at without squinting. I closed my eyes tightly against the glare, wishing vainly that the familiar faces of the onlookers were just another dream; terrified that when I opened them, I would see those same faces filled with hatred, their mouths joining in the monstrous roar of malevolence, commanding the death of the righteous one.

M’lady, M’lady, are you all right? I could hear Antonia’s concern. She knew how I had dreaded this journey, how fervent had been my prayers for some miracle to forestall what I knew was destiny—his, mine, and the world’s. Unlike the others, Antonia had known me almost since birth.

I’m fine, Antonia, fine. Please do not worry, I am just drained. We have been traveling now for more than thirty days. The heat makes it almost impossible to sleep at night—it never cools off here.

It was still only midmorning, and yet the temperature had to be over ninety. The fall weather in Athens had always been gloriously cool, crisp, wholly different from this unrelenting, insufferable heat.

Antonia wasn’t fooled by my reply, in spite of my attempt at a smile. I did not blame her. I knew that the upturn of my lips was more rictus than smile...and with good reason. We were heading toward a doom of the kind the world had never seen, and I knew there was nothing I could do or say to stop it. Surveying my surroundings, I felt no relief at the unchanged jubilance, the joyous expressions on the faces of the crowds.

It would come, and soon.

I am nearing the end of my life. Seventy-nine years lived as a shadow, a face behind a curtain, whispering the residues of a dream. Insubstantial, unheard. But my time of silence is done.

It is time to write the truth for those with ears to hear it. I am Procula, wife of Lucius Pontius Pilate. My husband has been dead for several decades now. Like me, Lucius is the subject of vast ignorance, lies, and injustice. The very name Pontius Pilate has become synonymous with cowardice and betrayal.

Those who claim to know the substance of my dream believe it emanates from evil. Others insist that those words that will be recited by Christians, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, and died, were the source of terror in my dreams. I was told by the Oracle that those eight words would echo throughout the centuries and be memorialized in something that would be called the Apostles’ Creed. Most of the people reciting the Creed would mindlessly overlook the word under and believe that the Righteous One was crucified by my husband.

The slanderous claims, and all others like them, no longer break my heart; they are merely annoying. I often think of the writing of Socrates, a man I consider a good friend though he died before I was born. His wisdom and humility await those rare searchers of truth. I know I am intelligent because I know I know nothing.

I was born in Delphi, daughter of the last of the Oracles of Pythia. It was a time of disorder, chaos, terror, and the death of nations. My mother broke her vow of virginity in lying with my father. She feared for both our lives, because what she had done was punishable by death—hers and mine. The time of the Oracles was coming to an end. Men no longer listened to the whispers of the prophets, certainly not to the women—not even when we had the words of the gods on our lips.

I survived, but my mother did not. I was taken to Athens, where I was raised by Adrian and Sabina. Only they knew that I was the last Oracle; my true identity remained a secret to all others—although my husband speculated as much, due to my foreknowledge of so many things.

I ask that you permit a conceit. This book will be told in two voices: my own and my husband’s. Perhaps that seems presumptuous, or worse: specious? My defense is this: Near the end of his life, almost daily, my husband told me that I knew him better than he knew himself. He talked incessantly about how close he had come to refusing the thunderous command of the Jews. When Quintillus, Lucius’s best friend and peerless centurion, gave me Lucius’s Final Report of Lucius Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar on the Crucifixion of the Christ, including the letters he’d exchanged with Seneca, this book designed itself.

Could I have intervened when the famed Stoic philosopher directed my husband’s every thought? Incited a hatred toward the Jews that cost him and the world—no less than everything?

You decide.

CHAPTER ONE

ATHENS, MACEDONIA

Claudia Procula

They say it is impossible. I was, after all, barely two when we left Greece. But I remember Delphi. The only place I knew as home echoes in my mind and heart still, after almost eight decades of absence. The Delphian air is purer, the sky bluer, and the mountains redolent with wisdom. Scrambling through the tunnels beneath the Treasury of Athena kept me safer than I’d have been in a nanny’s arms, and infused me with more knowledge than did my later tutors. It was there, crawling alone around and under those sacred stone structures, that the unreliability of the senses, the language of the Forms, the highest Good, transcendent and absolute, impressed themselves into my very being. That there was just one god, not many, was a certainty I shared with the Hebrews.

Too young. It’s absurd. Inconceivable.

I know. I think that too, as I write this so many years later. But the truth is this. By the time I was nine, my Aunt Sabina and Uncle Adrian—my kind, adoptive parents—decided I was old enough to study philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, Latin, and Greek. Sabina hired tutors, the best in Athens. She could not understand why they lasted just days.

Claudia Procula! Alejandro has quit, she admonished me. He is the third tutor you’ve had in three months. I had to pay him a month’s wages though he was here for only five days!

I looked up from the scroll of Plato’s Republic. Sabina stood looking down at me, her expression a mixture of puzzlement and something else—I wasn’t sure what. Without thinking, I retorted, You and Uncle Adrian could have saved a substantial sum if you had listened when I asked to spend my days in the Aristotle Library.

The color in her cheeks rising, Sabina visibly worked to control her anger. She was Mother’s older sister by ten years and must have been past forty, but her beauty remained. She wore a dark-violet stola with a light-lavender shawl tied at her narrow waist with a gold braid. A gold armband served as her only jewelry. Sabina had competed in the Heraean Games twice and won laurel crowns each time in the long-distance marathons. Her shape had changed little since those days.

Touching her long, blonde braid, my aunt’s expression and voice softened as she studied me. Why do these men quit tutoring you, Claudia? What makes them want to leave so suddenly? Alejandro could not remove himself from here fast enough. It was almost as if he thought you— Abruptly, she covered her mouth momentarily, then let her slender hand drop back to her side. She closed her eyes and murmured the prayer I had heard often since childhood.

Clear-eyed Athena, unrivaled in wisdom, daughter of Zeus and Metis whose craft and wit excelled among the mighty Titans: Athena, I pray to you. Wise in all things you are, goddess; your cunning and guile are well known. In time of war you have no equal in tactics or in strategy; many armies have you guided to victory. In time of peace your blessings fall on those whose work is of the mind–friend of the philosopher, the scientist, the student. Advisor of kings, patron of clever heroes and bold-hearted adventurers, defender of the thinker, mistress of reason and understanding, goddess to whom a strong arm and a sharp sword are nothing without the sense to wield them well and the insight to know when words are worth more than weapons. Athena, grant me a sound mind and steady temper, bless me with good judgment, show me the long view.

These words are beautiful, even wise, Aunt Sabina, but Athena is just an illusion. Her mouth produces no words, her mind no thoughts, and her heart does not beat. Your goddess is merely an instrument on which to hang human weakness.

The moment the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to reach into the still, warm, summer air, grab them and eat them.

My aunt swayed ever so slightly from side to side, her turquoise eyes hardening into flint. "You have no right! With all of her gifts—the gifts you share—your mother never...ever... spoke so cruelly. Know this, Claudia Procula: Should you utter one more viperous word, you will be out of this house! Impossibly, her eyes grew even colder. Someone as wise as you surely knows what would become of an abandoned female ten-year-old, does she not?"

I learned on that sultry afternoon just how massive a burden it was to possess the supernatural knowledge I had done nothing to merit. I also learned that once loathsome, pitiless words are uttered, no power in this world or another can cauterize the wounds they make. They bleed into eternity.

CHAPTER TWO

GERMANIA

Lucius Pontius Pilate

I was born to be a warrior. Until I donned the tunic, body armor, and shoulder plates of the legionnaire, I felt like a child. I knew upon grabbing the dagger, sword, javelin, and shield that this was my destiny. As a boy, I had been ungainly, all angles, awkward and fumbling. But as I placed the helmet on my head and joined my legion, I knew that time had passed. I would lead men. And soon.

The march from Rome to the outskirts of Germanicus was dreadful. Our commander underestimated the effect of the northern winter and overestimated the strength and endurance of his legion. More than one hundred Roman soldiers died from exposure and exhaustion before we met a single Germanian. Stupidity. Incompetence. Inexcusable in a leader. My pent-up anger when we finally met our enemy whipped my speed, tactics, and deadliness into something manic, crazed, unstoppable. At the end of that first day, exhausted and improperly clothed, we sent the Germans fleeing. The Roman soldiers who had survived were cheering my name.

LUCIUS!

PONTIUS!

PILATE!

Our Tribune was dead. Overnight, at the age of twenty-eight, I became Tribune.

Was it destiny that caused Tiberius to ride onto the blood-soaked German soil just as the men were hauling me atop their shoulders and shouting my name? Was it fate that caused the next emperor of Rome to smile as he replaced my helmet with a laurel wreath? As he wordlessly crowned me Tribune after my very first day of battle, the men continued shouting my three names until the trees shook.

Had I known Claudia then, and had she told me of my future, would I have turned away from my calling, cutting short my rapid ascent to the pinnacle of the best army the world had ever witnessed? Could I have become a farmer like my brother… a physician like my uncle…or perhaps a consul like Seneca?

Seneca, he to whom I gave my trust blindly. He whose words I revered and whose viewpoints became mine.

CHAPTER THREE

ATHENS, MACEDONIA

Claudia Procula

At fifteen, I was of marriageable age. Old, even, when compared to the three daughters of Aunt Sabina’s best friend Phoebe, all of whom were married by their twelfth birthdays. Girls were expensive and dowries were expected; the wealthier the household, the more extravagant the dowry.

Had Uncle Adrian not been so fond of me, I’d have been gone that dreadful summer afternoon when I stupidly and cruelly insulted Sabina’s faith, her goddess Athena. There is no excuse for the lack of respect I showed a woman who had taken me in and done her very best to prepare me for the world.

And yet, when I look back through these ancient eyes, I have sympathy for that impossibly young girl who had just mastered Plato’s Republic. She’d been feeling the supreme joy of deciphering a map to wisdom, discovering that philosophy can be a practical guide to life.

At the end of that first reading of the Republic, I finally had the words to express portions of the inchoate knowledge with which I’d been infused at Delphi: virtue, justice, immortality, eternity, nobility. I knew, even then, that there were just two paths: that of the foolish and that of the wise. But the maps delineating those paths were often obscured, even deceptive. I understood that the knowledge of how to live emanates from wisdom—but also that it takes considerable work and study to embody true good. The pursuit of wisdom would assure that I would not live the life of the fool.

Upon reading Socrates’ explication of Plato for the first time, I didn’t just learn but recognized the writer’s words:

That the true lover of knowledge is always striving after being—that is his nature; he will not rest in the multiplicity of individuals which is an appearance only, but will go on—the keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force of his desire abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true nature of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the soul, and by that power drawing near and mingling and becoming incorporate with very being, having begotten mind and truth, he will have knowledge and will live and grow truly, and then, and not till then, will he cease from his travail.

This was the work of a lifetime—I knew it even then. An endeavor that requires no less than everything; a practice that can be shared with no one but the creator.

Uncle Adrian walked in the house just as I was finishing the ninth chapter. "What are you doing, Claudiaki mou?" he asked.

Adrian was an aristocrat–one of the arostoi—and he looked the part as he stood in the courtyard smiling down at me, the tanned olive skin of his arms and muscular, robust legs contrasting sharply with the gold linen chiton he wore. His distinctive white-wool toga indicated that he had been at the agora that morning.

Due to the force of my concentration, I had not noticed the onset of dusk until I heard his voice. He looked pleased, even relaxed. The morning meeting must have gone well. I knew he had been concerned about the fate of a new tax plan he’d devised with two other citizens. A wealthy property owner, my uncle was an influential citizen in Athens. His was one of the largest farms in Athens, with acres of olive trees and vineyards and more than forty slaves to work it.

"I’m finishing Plato’s Republic, Uncle," I answered him, proudly pointing at the thick pile of pages I’d read, next to the thin sheaf still to be completed.

Eyebrows raised, his smile grew wide. This calls for a celebration! Where is Sabina?

At Phoebe’s. They are working to complete a wedding dress for her youngest daughter.

Reaching down to pull me up off the couch, my uncle said, Come! Let’s find Antonia and some wine. Then you can tell me all that you have learned.

And so I did, for over two hours, as Uncle Adrian listened carefully and asked a question now and then to get me to clarify a point. He was particularly interested in my excitement about the ideal state, the philosopher king, and what I called the irrefutable logic of there being just one god, not many. Just one cause of everything.

Eyes shining, Uncle Adrian said, I’m very proud of you, Claudia. When I gave you my copy of those scrolls for your birthday last year, I had no idea that you would devour their content as if it were mere air!

I think it was the fact that my erudite uncle had seemed to agree with my ideas—even about religion—that inspired the hubris in me and impelled me to correct Sabina. After my foolish outburst, my aunt distanced herself from me entirely and permanently. I faced each successive birthday with increasing apprehension, knowing that the day would soon come when I would be told whom I would marry.

It was a relief then, on the April evening of my fifteenth year, when she appeared in my doorway and said, Claudia, Adrian and I have decided it is time for you to meet your future husband, Lucius. We’ll be leaving early Friday morning. Pack all of your things. She spoke softly from the open door of my room and looked at me warily as if expecting an outburst.

I smiled and stood. Will you come in and sit for just a moment, Aunt Sabina? I held my breath. For the past five years, I had tried and failed to have a conversation I hoped desperately now to have.

We stared at one another at eye level. I was now as tall as she, five-foot-seven. I noted a shimmer of surprise in her eyes as, almost unwillingly, my aunt noted the similarity of our bodies. She was lovely, ageless, her skin like porcelain. I could easily see why my uncle had fallen in love with her. Her use of kohl around her eyes was artful, just bold enough to emphasize the unusual shade of them. The red ochre on her lips looked natural. Was this how my mother looked? I wondered. Then, with a jolt, Am I this beautiful?

I reined in my silly thoughts. Claudia, you will never have this chance again. Act.